Jarre at the royal wedding : 1, laser harp : 0

I got an email from Dan Wilson about the recent Jarre gig for the Monaco royal wedding. Looks like an excellent concert, although the laser harp had some issues – and JMJ didn’t look too happy about it.

I found this video on Dailymotion (with apologies in advance for all the ads they make you sit through!). The laser harp bit is about 20 minutes in…

It’s always a struggle getting a laser harp to function well at an outdoor event. There’s never enough smoke to see the beams properly, and when you crank it up too much you start getting false triggers – which I suspect might have happened in Monaco.

It’s interesting to hear what happens to the rest of the backing during the harp problems – the rhythm continues, but everything else stops. Glad to see that more of his music is live – I remember some discussion about his “Swatch” tour back in the early nineties about how he used a master control tape that had prerecorded music and effects sequencing.

I was in Monaco too. My first Jarre’s concert. I met him before the concert in his hotel and honor him with a special plaque from Brazilian fan club. He liked a lot. Concert was perfect, but the harp had this problem. But this is ok. Maybe he can use YOUR Harp next time….

Who is this guy?

Steve Hobley works for a software company, but in his spare time likes to deconstruct all the lovely consumer goods with a goal to make unique and interesting things.

A few years ago he posted a short clip of the laser harp he developed, solely to show friends back in the UK.

Automagically that one clip got picked up by Gizmodo, Engadget and a bunch of other tech journals. The end result (apart from a ton of views on Youtube) was to get hired as a consultant for Little Boots – creating a laser harp for her 2010 US tour.